As I write this, I’m sitting in the Malaysian international airport waiting for a connecting flight to India.

When I finally arrive in Delhi, I’ll be meeting up with one of my oldest and dearest friends, going all the way back to kindergarten, for a bucket-list holiday we’ve been planning for a year.

We’re flying on different planes from different places – me from Melbourne and Debbie from Rockhampton – and the reason for our reunion is a celebration. The youngest of our children (we both have two) has now finished school and all those intense parenting years are behind us.

So two girlhood friends, who started and finished school together, are now celebrating all of our own children finishing school and blossoming into adulthood, as we blossom into the next big phase of life after that.

It’s like we’ve come full circle. Our first overseas adventure together was backpacking through Europe as excited young women in our 20s. Now we’re wiser older women in our 50s, travelling together again after all the highs and lows of the decades in between.

Europe in the ’90s (above) and back at home (top).

There have been times that we drifted apart and then back together again, somehow always bonded through a shared history and a small town that has a kind of magical magnetic force.

As kids we were two peas in a pod. We grew up one street apart in the small beachside town of Yeppoon in Queensland.

We used to ride our bikes to school and on really high tides we’d have to stop where the waves crash over the road before fanging it to the other side.

Deb always had cute insulated water bottles rattling with ice in her school bag and on absolute scorchers we’d stop again under a tree for a cold drink. For some reason, I remember that.

We did everything together – Brownies, holiday camps and every sport there is.

Side by side as kids.

We carved out a softball pitch on a vacant block of land near our homes and burned around on a dirt bike track up the back of our hill. I’ll never forget watching Deb hit a rock and go flying over the handlebars, only to get back up with a bit of a wobble and sideways grin and jump on her bike again.

The only scary encounter I remember was riding our bikes over to the local pool when two men pulled up and offered to give us a ride. Lucky we had all that practice fanging it.

Sitting here, reflecting, makes me teary to think about all the things we’ve been through together.

You’d never guess this was the ’80s.

The teenage years brought movie nights, weekend jobs, parties and trips to Great Keppel Island. One weekend on Keppel, a determined Deb managed to talk her way into a party with Michael Hutchence and Kylie Minogue. Best night ever!

As our idyllic upbringing turned into adulthood, and then parenthood, and then the trickle of empty nesting, the bonds of our girlhood have been our nourishment.

It all sounds rather lovely now, but of course there was darkness too and struggles so heartbreaking or traumatising you wondered how to keep breathing.

But we survived everything thrown at us and are lucky enough to still be here, in good health, and buying matching backpacks to go travelling again.

As mums, on holiday with our own kids.

I am undeniably biased, but for me Queensland girls are special; so authentic and down to earth and loyal. They’re my forever girlfriends, etched into my soul, as important as oxygen, no matter how many states or countries are between us.

I can’t wait to get off the plane in India and see Deb’s excited face before we set off on another of life’s adventures together.

Because as Michael would say, nothing could ever change us or tear us apart.

Some of the Yeppoon girls … Deb, me, Debbie B and Lindy Lou.